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| Leigh Smith MD of WTL |
We caught up with Leigh Smith ahead of the AfricaCom Conference and Exhibition, taking place at the CTICC in Cape Town, South Africa 12-14 November to find out a bit more 2nd generation VoIP, his experiences and focus at the event.
AfricaCom: What is WTL up to in Africa?
As fibre continues to creep inland, many African start-ups are
starting to use VoIP over leased fibre lines to offer voice connectivity.
We are not discussing VoIP as in the consumer technology of Skype,
Viber etc whereby an app is downloaded. Rather the use of a VoIP by carriers and
service providers for their customers’ long-distance voice calls made in the
traditional fashion with customers having their own dedicated traditional phone
number.
Carriers in Africa have been slow to adopt VoIP technology in this
way because they have had concerns about reliability, QoS and costs.
It’s true that the technology to interconnect a VoIP link onto a
terrestrial network has been expensive. (Also many of the incumbent voice
operators have a justifiable fear of the effects of VoIP on their voice
revenues. A distrust and negative
attitude which has unfortunately affected VoIP adoption in parts of Africa
which have most to gain from its adoption.)
The switches used for transferring VoIP traffic onto a terrestrial
network were adapted from traditional voice switches by the large vendors –
Ericsson, ZTE, Huawei etc - and consequently are huge, expensive and require a
lot of maintenance which of course affects the bottom line. Moreover they do not use the optimum
compression techniques for VoIP.
WTL (World Telecom Labs) specializes in VoIP. We recognized that there was a huge market in
Africa for a smaller more cost-effective switch…
AfricaCom:
Tell me more about the WTL VoIP offering and its benefits to operators
in Africa
Our suite of 2nd generation VoIP switch - HyperPVx - have been designed from the ground
up to enable operators in Africa to cost-effectively set-up and manage a VoIP
network.
The research to develop them was part funded by the European Space
Agency and the product is now patented by the US Patent Office.
In a nutshell, our 2nd generation VoIP switches -
HyperPVx - save operators
significant amounts of money in terms of CAPEX - which of course is initial
purchase and set-up - as well as OPEX by
increasing capacity, freeing up capacity in congested
networks and enabling operators to cost-effectively add new capacity.
Since launching eight months ago WTL’s 2nd generation
switches are now being used by 20 operators in 14 countries across Africa. Unfortunately most of them don’t want to be
publicly named because of an (understandable but frustrating for us!)
unwillingness to tell competitors about how great our switches are!
Also many also prefer to hide the fact that they are using
cost-efficient compressed VoIP as this can still carry an unjustified stigma of
low quality from inferior non-WTL solutions.
Our customers at the moment are the early adopters; the most
innovative players who have already seen the benefits of VoIP and rolled out
services using it.
AfricaCom: Do you have any
specific customers you can tell us about?
Xplorium Inc. is a carriers’ carrier specializing in long
distance, backhaul of international traffic for mobile operators in Africa
& Middle East.
It has deployed the HyperPVx on its link from the Ivory Coast to
Paris. The result was an immediate reduction in the long distance bandwidth
required between the two locations. The new WTL-based solution needed only 30%
of the capacity used by standard VoIP and this translated straight into big
monthly Opex savings. The network quickly ran at the planned capacity of 480
simultaneous calls with high audio quality even though each call used less than
7K bps (standard VoIP calls of similar quality will often use more than 30K
bps).
Karim Charif, Technical Director, Xplorium Inc. says
"WTL is an innovative company which has really considered the needs
of operators using VoIP. Its switches have been specifically designed to reduce
the costs of deploying and maintaining a VoIP network, whilst maintaining the
quality of the voice calls.
We have been able to significantly reduce our costs both in terms
of CAPEX, OPEX and indeed by being able to increase capacity through WTL's
specialist compression techniques".
AfricaCom: How is VoIP changing
the market and why is it important for WTL to be a leader in the field?
VoIP is
a classic disruptive technology for service providers because it enables new
entrants to enter with lower cost, innovative services. The new players are
able to deploy smaller more efficient, more flexible 2nd generation
VoIP switching. So, existing operators need to review their networks and
installed equipment to avoid being caught flat footed by these rivals
AfricaCom: What strategies are
you putting in place to help operators maximise revenues from VoIP services?
We are
pushing a number of strategies for OpEx reduction.
a)
our
patented NOP which reduces the amount of long-distance IP bandwidth required to
run a VoIP service.
b)
Our 2nd
generation VoIP switches are a more integrated product than others on the
market meaning we reduce the amount of different equipment needed therefore
decreasing support bills, rack space, power and so on. For example, with WTL,
the SoftSwitch, SBC, Signalling Gateway and Media Gateway Controller (MGC) can
all be delivered as a single small device.
AfricaCom: What are your expectations
from taking part in AfricaCom this year?
This is the 5th time that WTL has
attended the show. We have been around for 15 years specializing in VoIP systems
since the earliest days of this technology but have maintained a low profile
with sales coming through customer recommendations.
We
are a niche vendor – at the moment – and are successful because our products
are innovative and solve cost and efficiency problems for our customers.
We would be happy to meet with any
operators who have already rolled out VoIP networks and are looking for
additional efficiencies – and those who are considering what role VoIP could
and should play within their businesses.
Please visit www.wtl.be
for more information, email sales@wtl.be to book an appointment at the show or
come to our stand, P74a.
Visit World Telecoms Lab at AfricaCom 2013. Come and meet them at stand P74a by registering for your free ticket to AfricaCom Here
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